Convert VCD to MKV/MP4 for watching on 47" LED TV

[akrogun]

Hi....
I have several VCDs that contain our family home video. As we know that VCDs resolution is 352x240 for PAL or 352x288 for NTSC. With Handbrake, I can rip VCD to MP4, but with only 352x288, if this MP4 is watched on TV it will too small to watch.
Ok.... then I try to resize that MP4 with Freemake Video Converter to 1280x720 so that we can watch that video on TV..... wow it's very very huge, it's about 1,8GB
The question is: how to minimize that file as far as possible??
Thanks for response....

[KBeee]

You are under a misapprehension.
Watching a 252*288 (PAL VCD size, not NTSC VCD size) video on your TV wont be displayed in a little box in the centre of the screen, it will be resized by your TV to fill the TV's native resolution.
Re-encoding from the VCD's mpeg1 to h264 will degrade the original quality, and re-sizing thru software to a higher resolution will degrade it further.
Your best bet would be to extract the original MPEG1 video from the VCD, and watch that, letting your TV handle the upscaling.

[jman98]

What KBeee said.

Additionally, trying to upscale yourself in software from VCD resolutions will give you truly terrible quality output. You'd be best served to let your TV do the upscaling for you as TVs have some filters that can make VCD look OK even on HDTVs. I do want to point out that many if not most current BluRay players do not support VCD playback at all. I have a Philips DVD player that I use when I watch VCD. I also want to point out that stretching an upscaled 4:3 VCD image (note that ALL VCDs only support 4:3 video - there is no 16:9 - even letterboxed VCD is actually within a 4:3 window) to 16:9 is also a bad idea and even with your TV's filters it will look bad. For best quality watch your VCDs in 4:3 on your TV and just live with the black bars on the sides of the picture.

[Cornucopia]

Actually, jman98, though it isn't part of the spec, I've been able to create a Anamorphic 16:9 VCD for years (I use it as a demo in my collection). However, not many players support the flag (probably because they're hard-coded to assume 4:3 for VCD). "VCD_PLAY" software player from Roxio does.
Otherwise, I agree completely with what you said.

Scott

[KBeee]

VCD and mpg files can be problematic on some players. My Samsung DVR will play mpg files, but ONLY if I rename them from video.mpg to video.avi (no re-encode, purely a rename of the file extension). Won't play VCD's at all, only the demuxed mpeg renamed to avi...

[yoda313]

Your best bet would be to extract the original MPEG1 video from the VCD, and watch that, letting your TV handle the upscaling.

Another option similar to this is to author a dvd with the original video. Most authoring programs should offer to reencode the audio from 44.1khz to 48khz and leave the video untouched since mpeg1 is allowable for dvd.

Tmpgenc dvd author does this as do many other programs. Than you'll have a perfectly usable dvd to work with. And actually that might be better for file playback as a video_ts folder or use something like vob2mpg to get a simple single mpg file out of it (that is in dvd mode with the right dvd specs).

Please correct me if I'm wrong somewhere but that would be another relatively painless option to get a working solution out of this.

I was unaware that vcd wasn't part of the bluray package anymore. I don't have any vcds to worry about but I'm surprised that functionality has been removed. So hence a dvd would make more sense with minimal reencoding.

Again if I"m missing something in this option please let the original poster know. Thanks.

[akrogun]

You are under a misapprehension.
Watching a 252*288 (PAL VCD size, not NTSC VCD size) video on your TV wont be displayed in a little box in the centre of the screen, it will be resized by your TV to fill the TV's native resolution.
Re-encoding from the VCD's mpeg1 to h264 will degrade the original quality, and re-sizing thru software to a higher resolution will degrade it further.
Your best bet would be to extract the original MPEG1 video from the VCD, and watch that, letting your TV handle the upscaling.

KBeee... sorry, what I mean is I want to extract the VCD into MP4/MKV so I can watch those with USB Flash Disk on TV

[Cornucopia]

First, TV media players vary widely in their support of MP4, MKV, as well as many other media filetypes. How do you know just WHAT yours supports? (since you don't actually name what your TV make & model is)...

I wouldn't recommend a tool until I knew exactly which format (and other specifications such as AR support, pulldown support, etc) this device is going to be capable of supporting.

Scott

[akrogun]

Cornucopia...
I don't know anything about AR support, pulldown, etc.... I can only give you link to the product. Here it is.... http://www.lg.com/my/tvs/lg-47LM4610
For sure, I have other movies (MKV and MP4) and play smoothly from USB Flash Disk connected to the TV from back panel.

[jman98]

Well, you could use VCDgear to extract the movie from the VCD discs and feed that into MKVmerge GUI and see if your TV can play it, but as these TV media players always have limitations, the people who wrote the firmware may not have ever expected anyone to do that so it may not be supported.

Interested about the demo VCD disc, Scott. I had some VCD quality fan film files that I turned into an MPEG-1 DVD using Scenarist that I use sometimes as a test disc. I've found a lot of BluRay player that refuse to touch VCD at all or even standalone MPEG-1 video, but they all play my DVD correctly.

[Cornucopia]

Cornucopia...
I don't know anything about AR support, pulldown, etc.... I can only give you link to the product. Here it is.... http://www.lg.com/my/tvs/lg-47LM4610
For sure, I have other movies (MKV and MP4) and play smoothly from USB Flash Disk connected to the TV from back panel.

Well, I've got a similar model LG - I'll try a few things on mine this evening (if I can get my son away from the screen).

Scott

<edit>@jman98, let me know by PM if you want a copy of a test VCD I did. I'd have to cut it down (it's ~60 minutes, and BORING - about "controlled burns").

[akrogun]

SOLVED !!! I use VCDGear, as jman98 said, to extract VCD to mpg, and watch that mpg with USB flash disk on my TV. It's work!!! Thanks all

KBeee, you're right, I thought TV can't resize by itself.

Sorry for late reply....

[KBeee]

Glad to hear you got it working